Jaime Armendariz, left, hugs his girlfriend, Rachel Lopez, while paying respects to the Lupoe family in front of the family’s house in Los Angeles on Wednesday.

LOS ANGELES — Awash in debt, behind on his mortgage and recently fired from his job at a hospital, Ervin Lupoe was planning on leaving California.

The 40-year-old father of five pulled his children out of school, packed his sport utility vehicle with snow chains and winter clothing for him and his family and appeared ready for the trip to his brother-in-law's home in Garden City, Kan.

It's not yet known if he was planning on leaving for good in a bid to flee his mounting money problems or if the trip would have only been temporary.

Whatever his intention, Lupoe never got to Kansas.

Instead, police say, he shot his five children and wife to death before turning the gun on himself.

"Something happened in the last 48 hours that made him snap," said Detective David Cortez of the Los Angeles Police Department, the lead investigator in the case. "(He saw) no other way, no other direction."

Investigators found evidence of spiraling financial woes, including a bounced check to the Internal Revenue Service. Lupoe owed at least $15,000, as well as thousands of dollars on a home equity line of credit.

He also was at least one month behind on a mortgage for his home in Wilmington, near the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, Cortez said.

But Cortez said it was Lupoe, not the stagnant state of the economy, that was to blame.

"Being there and walking through the crime scene, it's a lot easier to see him as the suspect that did this to other people than the economy did this to him," Cortez said.

"It's how he chose to respond to the circumstances; he had options."

Police found the bodies of Lupoe, his wife and five children Tuesday morning. The bodies of 2-year-old twin boys, Benjamin and Christian, were beside their dead mother, Ana. In another bedroom, the bodies of 5-year-old twin girls, Jaszmin and Jassely, and their 8-year-old sister Brittney lay on a mattress pad next to their lifeless father.

He appeared to have attempted to muffle the sound of gunfire by shooting a semiautomatic handgun through a pillow.

"It looked like they were all caught by surprise," Cortez said.

Neighbors' reports of firecracker sounds indicated the family might have been killed the evening before and Lupoe shot himself the next day, Cortez said.

Lupoe faxed a bitter, two-page letter to a local TV news station the morning he killed himself. In his letter, Lupoe suggested it was his wife's idea to end the family members' lives.

"He had one of those victim mentalities," Cortez said. "There is nothing yet that suggests his wife was a willing party."